One Sweet Moment
by first-rain
Summary: Ever wonder how Naruto comes to love ramen? This story is for you. No slash. No profanity. COMPLETE.


Title: One Sweet Memory

Type and Genre: general

Rating & Warnings: PG, angst, not betaed.

Summary: Young Naruto is playing in the snow and in trouble. This is how Naruto comes to love ramen.

Note: I barely got B in my English classes. I don't write many fanfics, and for worse, this is my first attempt at Naruto fics and my first completed fic ever. Criticism is very welcome, but please do not be so harsh. I'm also looking for a beta reader for future Naruto fanfics (if there is any) and for this one too (if possible). Please email me at sanzou_saiyuki@hotmail.com if you're interested.

_#italic: thought_

Naruto sat on his favorite swing, clad in several thin layers of clothes. His small body shivered every now and then, and it would refuse to stop quivering despite how tight his arms were wrapping around his shins. His head was upon his knees, and he tried his best to keep his eyes open. He desperately wished he could be home now and indulge himself in his warm, thick quilt and sweet sleep.

Naruto shook his head to shoo his thought away. He had determined to wake himself early and waited here for the other kids to come. Surely, if he was here that soon, they would let him join the snowball fights. He had been so unlucky for the last twenty-one times for there had been always enough members.

To Naruto's joy, the sound of giggles from a couple of girls made him forget his sleepiness. He jumped on his feet and ran toward them with a big grin. "You came! You came! I'm here early today! Can I join?"

The girls were startled. Their laughter stopped. They shot each other a nervous look, but Naruto was too excited to notice. One of them, after a few seconds of hesitance, excused herself, "Eh... Um... We'll have to wait for Yaten first. Um... Well, we did not intend to play anyway. We were just going home."

Naruto came back to his swing and comforted himself that he would be luckier next time. But for the next thirty minutes, another pair of boys came and left, and so did another groups and couples. By this time, Naruto could hardly feel his fingers and his body nearly frozen of cold. He slid off the swing with difficulty as his legs could barely move and was ready to come home when a voice called him, "Hey, you!"

Naruto turned back, eyes brightened with merriness as he saw a big crowd of kids, mistaken for his soon-to-be playmates.

"Did you call me? You're letting me in, right? Right?" asked Naruto eagerly.

The kid rolled his eyes, "Bullshit!" He wrapped his arms around his chest, bending backward a bit to look like a strong gang head. "Why did you bully my underlings?"

One of the girls kicked him behind his shin, and the kid groaned in pain as he lost his balance and collapsed on the snow ground.

"Who said you were my leader?" said the girl, fist swung up, baring her teeth.

The kid babbled, sweatdrops on his temples, "Sorry... I did not mean to..."

Naruto could not help but laugh in amusement as he saw the scenario. He did not bother to comprehend what the kid had said about "bully my underlings". The kids surely had mistook him for someone else.

Hearing the laughter, the kid stood up and snapped angrily, "How dare you laugh at me? But you know what I meant. You shall not get away without paying."

Naruto blinked, "Hey, I did not do anything."

"You," the kid gestured at a small, skinny boy, "Come here! Tell me who has bullied you?"

The boy was frightened, but he pointed his shaking finger at Naruto, who was surprised as he realized it was one of the boys who had come and gone before he had a chance to talk them into playing with him. As Naruto glanced around the mob of heads, he realized almost all of them were the kids who had come up with excuses and left him alone.

_So they were just pretending and all. And I thought they were being honest._

Naruto bit his lips to stop the bitter tears. The leader grinned in pleasure as he saw Naruto's facial expression. "See. You realized it, did you not? Hiraku, Tamada, take him. The rest, go! Don't let him escape!"

Two of the big, older kids ran towards Naruto, aiming at his arms. Naruto barely had time to escape before he realized what was happening. Just as he turned his back and ran, two kids jumped at him from behind and topped him off to the ground. Snow spattered and attached itself to his face before melting, making small pool of water. Naruto tried to get his head off the ground while coughing as his freezing nose inhaled small flakes to his lungs. He struggled to turn around while kicked his legs wildly, and succeeded in getting a kid off him, but another three kids attacked him and replaced the other.

"Excellent, Tama, Yan! Now, let's punish him."

Naruto was turned on his back by two bullies while the other children crackling their knuckles towered over him. He yelled in panic, "Hey, let's me go! I did not do anything! Let's me..." his last word was replaced by another coughing fix.

The other children laughed as the kid leader snickered. "You told me to let you play with us," said he, "here we go! We start a new game today!"

The sentence was ended with a kick in Naruto's stomach, and it started an out lash of fists and hits from the boys and cheers from the girl standing outside. At first, Naruto tried to fight back with his legs, but they were soon restrained. He did not know how long it lasted, not when his back was so wet and chilling from the snow, not when his hands and legs could not move even if the children let him go, and not from the stabbing pain on his face, stomach, and ribs. He did not feel the fists on his body since every hit was a excruciating agony together with freezing cutting him to the bone. He figured the they must have been using dozen of kunais made from solid ice to stab him.

When the kids began to pant from the exercise, the boy leader kicked him in his rib for the last time and sneered, "That's for stealing our playground. You don't belong here. Nobody in their right minds would want to play with you. Moron! Stinker!!"

Naruto groaned from both physically and mental pain. As he opened his eyes, he caught a figure approaching him. Just as the figure was lifting to his leg to kick him, a dark aura began to radiate from Naruto's body and its shadow covered the thin air. The white snow around Naruto's body seemed to turn black. All of the children frozen in fear, but as the shadow began to form an enormous figure of some animal, one of the boys regained his sense and yelled incoherently, "Monst... ter... R...un... Run!"

The frightened kids fearfully stepped backwards, then turned their back and ran for their lives.

Naruto used his last strength to raise his head at the word "monster". He gasped in pain, "Please, don't... run away... I'll let... you be my leader." Tears streamed down his face as he watched the kids running away from him as though he was going to kill them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_#At the Ichiraku ramen shop_

"Damn! Snow again!" The old man Yoshida cursed when he opened his ramen shop in the morning. The small, cold, white snowflakes had started falling last night, and now covered the cement in front of his shop was a thick layer of snow that would take hours to clean up. Yoshida sighed as he looked up into the sky and caught those snowy flakes upon his brows.

Yoshida did not hate winter so much as he hated when the villagers stayed in their houses, preferred to have a hot family meals in the warm atmosphere than going out into the cold weather and having a ramen bowl. It was at those times that his famous Ichiraku ramen shop had no customer, and in the end, all of the noodles, whose quality was the best in the Konoha Village and which he was so proud of, went into the trash can, an act which he so despised of.

Yoshida went to his note and took out a list of items to be purchased. He did not have to open his shop, but it would benefit an outsider to have a warm meal in this cold winter, and besides, this was a job that he took great joy in doing.

"Yuna," Yoshida called to his wife, "Take care of the shop. I'm going to the market."

"'kay!" said a voice from the inside.

Thus, went Yoshida to the market, taking his time to choose the best available meat and miso before going back. On the way home, he notice a small bundle covered with snow. At first, he ignored it, but something nagged at him and told him to step closer, and so he did.

Yoshida let out a gasp as he saw a piece of cloth sticking out of the snow. He dropped his bags aside and used his hands to dig in the snow, pulling out a freezing, frightening cold body. And what hurt him more was to see a very small body of a child no older than six.

Yoshida shook his head in pity. He brushed aside the snow on the boy's head, which had been dyed white with flakes, while his eyes welled up with tears. He remembered his own boy who had died in the winter years ago, and he had been like this, sitting in the same position, holding the head to his chest and weeping.

As a tear dropped on the boy's cheek, he thought he had heard a small groan, but he disregarded it for his imagination. After all, he had been old and had begun to experienced strange sounds calling his name frequently. But there was another long, distinct moan from beneath him. Yoshida was startled out of joy.

"You're alive, kid! I thought you were dead."

There was no answer, and Yoshida lifted his finger to the boy's nose and felt his skin warm from the boy's breath. He stood up, scooped the child on his arms, and brushed snow on his face. When he took a near look at the boy, he froze and dropped the body in shock. The kid moaned in pain as his back hit the ground and then laid still.

Meanwhile, Yoshida was fighting with his mind for there was no doubt that this is the fox, the Nine-tailed who had taken away his boy. How could he have not noticed this? He looked down at the body in disgust. The distinct three lines on each cheek were there.

Yoshida turned his back and walked away, completely forgotten his shopping bags, but he could make only twenty feet before the image of a child dying invading his mind. He tried in vain to prevent his mind from wandering to the fox and to replace the kid with the image of the Nine-Tailed attacking the village.

"He deserves what he got, doesn't he?" Yoshida muttered under his breath and kept walking, but his steps led him back to the dying fox. Shaking his head in frustration, he picked up the fox. After all, fox or not, it was still a child, and a child wasn't supposed to die in this cold winter. He knew he was being foolish, but he could not help seeing the fox as a little kid.

"I suppose it couldn't be helped."

When Yoshida came home, his wife was the first to greet him with a question, "What are you doing being so late? And what did you pick up? I thought you were going to buy meat, not dragging a dirty rag..." Yuna frowned as she walked to him.

Just as Yoshida had thought, when she saw the child's face, her face was ashen. It took her a whole minute before she could regain her old snappish self, "What are you thinking bring the..."

"Shush!" Yoshida covered his wife mouth with one of his hand and would have dropped the child if he had not taken his hand back quickly, "Don't say the word! Do you want Hokage-sama to punish us?"

Yoshida brought the child into the shop, passed through the door and to his living room. There he put him down, and went to retrieve a mattress.

As Yuna realized what he was doing, she growled at him, "What are you doing? Bringing that... creature here and now getting the mattress. Stop it now! What madness has come to you?" She took a hold of his arm, but he pried her hands off his arms.

"Look! I know you're upset, but he's a kid. A CHILD. Don't you understand? He'd be dead if I did not save him."

"Then why did you save it? It should have been left dead. Good ridden, I must say."

"If you're not going to help, then go away," Yoshida snapped back, "I've never known you could be so heartless."

Yuna bit her lips as anger shook her body. This was the first time ever since they got married Yoshida had yelled at her. She turned her back and strode away, but not before dropping a last warning, "Fine! Do whatever you want! But don't regret it when it kills you!"

Yoshida shook his head in disbelief at his wife's response, but he progressed to bring the mattress and the several thick blankets back. Turning on the fireplace, Yoshida got the child out his clothes. He was surprised at the bruises covering the boy, looking as if it has suffered badly from a fistfight. Yoshida cleaned him up quickly before covering him with the blankets, ignoring the strange picture of symbols carved on the kid's belly.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The first thing Naruto encountered when he opened his eyes was a pair of worried brown eyes and a face of an fifty-year-old man whose lips instantly formed a warm smile at him, but the man coughed abrupty and quickly hid his relieved smile.

Naruto sat himself up quickly, but a bit too quick for his body groaned in protest. The man opened his mouth and raised his hand to say something, but he stopped and ordered Naruto instead, "Wait here."

When he came back a minute later, in his hand was a tray carrying a large bowl of hot miso soup. The smokes were still rising from the broth, and its smell made Naruto's stomach give a loud thud.

"Eat this."

Naruto blinked his eyes in surpise at the man, could not believe in his ear that this delicious looking and wonderful smelling noodle bowl was for him. There was a flash of pain and pity cut through Yoshida's heart for he had never seen anyone could be that happy just having a free noodle. It was as if nobody had never been kind to the boy. Judging his own first reaction and his wife's, perhaps there would be no one indeed.

"This one is for you. Eat quickly and get out of here."

Some of the light in the boy's eyes seemed to dim a little, and before Yoshida had realized what he was doing, he had been cursing at himself, regreting for saying it.

"Well, just eat, all right?"

The child flashed him a bright smile, "Thank you very much," before taking a gulp on the hot soup.

"Be careful. It's hot," said Yoshida without thinking.

Naruto grinned back at him, eyes nearly close completely, "Wow, it's so good!!! I've never had anything that wonderful. Wow."

Yoshida tried his best to restrain his laughter at the boy's flattery. He had always been proud his ramen was the best, but hearing it from the boy was a whole lot different. He had never known the boy's merriness could be so contagious. When the child had slept, there were still some traces of the fox evident, but now he was completely awake, it seemed he was just a normal, innocent, harmless kid.

The boy continued eating his bowl and stopped sometimes to drop Yoshida some compliments, "I can't believe I've lived this long knowing nothing of this delicious stuff."

"Ah... I've been wasting my life without having this."

But his joy did not last long as Yoshida's wife hearing the noises and came inside growling, "Finish? Get out of my shop! I have to burn these blankets." She picked them up and added, "And this mattress too."

The child's face darkened, but he brightened up quickly, "I'm done. Thank you for the delicious meal, Mr. and Mrs."

Yoshida covered his anger at his wife with a neutral look and gave Naruto back his clothes. The boy clothed himself quickly and went out of the shop. He gave Yoshida a thankful smile and said, "I'll pay you back, Mr."

"There is no need too."

"But I will. Your ramen was so delicious," he grinned, "I'll come back tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow too. I won't go back on my words for it'll be my ninja way."

Yoshida could only smile as he watched the child running down the street.

Since then, the cute kid continued coming back to the Ichiraku shop and eating ramen. Yoshida's heart was full of joy every time he saw the energetic child with warm laughter, who would flatter him with endless compliments for his noodles. The kid seemed to be never tired of ramen, but his favorite was still miso ramen, the one Yoshida had brought to him when he first awoke. Yoshida always put extra meat and noodle in Naruto's bowl, but he hid his affection for the boy because he did not want to upset his wife, for one, and for another, he was a seller and lived on his customers. If the adults in the village knew he had come to love the kid, they would never want to have ramen at his shop.

For Naruto, the delicious smell of ramen continued to linger in his memory. He could still feel the warm of ramen and miso broth in his stomach since that incident. It was the first time he ever woke up and had someone brought a warm meal to his bed. Although the owner did not seem to like him much, he was the nicest one Naruto had ever known. He could still feel the happiness of that one sweet moment of having someone taking care of him. Since then, he had loved ramen whose scent was nostalgic and brought back sweet memory.

~The End~

A/N: I must say I don't know what the heck I was writing. I must say this fic wrote itself. I neither intended to let Naruto being bullied nor let it drag out, but it turned out to be like this. This is supposed to be finished, but again this story is trying to get something more out from me. I've been trying to resist the temptation. If I write more, I'll never have a completed story written. 


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